Mark Steyn addresses a reader complaint about the Reagan euologies in light of his flaws, such as "the oppression and poverty inflicted on Central America as a direct result of his foreign policies":

One can argue that things have slipped a little in the last three years: fiscal woes in Argentina; the grubby thug Chavez in Venezuela. But still, even by the most pessimistic reading, an area that 30 years ago was wall-to-wall dictatorships is now overwhelmingly democratic. Whatever the continent's fate, it won't include a return of the puffed-up bemedalled El-Presidentes-For-Life, like General Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, who abolished Christmas and banned Donald Duck.

Great point, followed by an even better one:

That's what makes Latin America relevant to the Bush project in the Middle East. For much of the last century, the region was mired in the same dead-end victim complex as the Arab world. The celebrated Brazilian sociology professor Fernando Henrique Cardoso was a famous proponent of "Dependency Theory", which blamed the woes of everybody south of the Rio Grande on Uncle Sam, in much the same way that Arab regimes, invited to explain why they're sewers of corruption and brutality, bore on about the Great Satan and the Zionist Entity.

Definitely warrants a GRTHT™.